ABSTRACT
Having emerged, with little preparation and far more rapidly than anyone had expected, from its previous condition of colonial dependence upon Australia, Papua New Guinea finds itself tom between the desire for the genuine independence appropriate to its new status in the community of nations and the advantages to be derived from a continuing state of dependence upon the former colonizing power. The government of Papua New Guinea has committed itself to a course designed to move it from the latter condition to the former with deliberate speed. In doing so it has chosen to accept the Australian government’s offers of substantial aid for an extended period of time in order to make that transition in a way that will inflict a minimum of hardship upon its people and a minimum of strain upon the new democratic political institutions of the country.
